Nightwatcher (Nightwatcher #1)(94)

Probably not. The sidewalk is hard. He leans forward to look down at it, and notices something.

“Policemen are here,” he tells Jamie.

“What are you talking about?”

“There are policemen. Right there in front of the building. See?”

Jamie curses.

“You shouldn’t say that word,” Jerry admonishes. “Mama says it’s bad.”

“Your mother is dead, Jerry. Do you still not get it?”

“I forgot.” Jerry’s lip quivers.

“You forget everything! Come on! Let’s go.”

“Go where?”

“We have to get out of here.”

A moment ago, that was all Jerry wanted—to get out of here.

But not with Jamie. Jamie is scaring him.

“Let’s go, Jerry! Move!”

“You said not to leave the apartment! See? I don’t forget everything. You said something bad would happen if I leave!”

“Well, now I’m telling you something bad will happen if you don’t, so come on!”

Jerry shakes his head. This is wrong. This is bad. Jamie is bad. Jamie lied. Jamie . . .

Isn’t acting at all like Jamie.

Jamie is acting like someone else, sounding and looking like someone else, and Jerry is afraid.

He rushes toward Mama’s bedroom. The door is still open. He slams it behind him, locks it, and leans on it, panting, as Jamie screams at him.

“What the hell are you doing? Are you crazy? They’re going to get you, don’t you understand that? You’re going to be in trouble. We’re going to be in trouble, Jerry!”

Turning the corner onto Hudson Street, Emily is startled to spot the flashing red dome lights of several squad cars parked down the block. Both she and Dale instinctively slow their steps.

“They’re in front of our building, aren’t they?” she asks her husband, who nods. “I thought we were just meeting those two detectives here.”

“So did I. You’d think with everything going on in this city, they wouldn’t be able to spare all this manpower for something like this.”

“Something like this?” she echoes incredulously. “It’s a murder. Two murders.”

“I didn’t mean it like that. I just can’t handle all this, Em. Getting dragged out of bed in the middle of the night, having to come down here . . . Come on, let’s just get it over with.”

Emily glances at her watch as they pick up their pace again. They’re late.

They’d borrowed Jacky’s car to drive into the city after being assured by Detective Manzillo that the bridges and tunnels were open. Unfortunately, they discovered that didn’t include the Holland Tunnel from Jersey City into lower Manhattan, so after being turned away there, they had to drive up to Weehawken to go through the Lincoln Tunnel and head back south—only to be stopped at another barricade, this time at Union Square.

“We’re meeting two detectives downtown on police business,” Dale told the national guardsmen who came over to the car. But the soldiers refused to make an exception to the rules without the proper credentials, and they refused to contact Detectives Manzillo and Brandewyne for verification.

“No vehicles past this point without prior clearance,” Dale and Emily were told firmly.

They had no choice but to park the car and cover the remaining distance on foot. Even the subways and buses weren’t running beyond that point.

Walking those eerily empty blocks in the middle of the night was unsettling enough. Now, seeing the cluster of emergency vehicles that are apparently waiting for them, Emily feels as though she’s stepped into someone else’s life, or onto the set of a movie about refugees in a dystopian, futuristic New York.

There are several cops standing out on the sidewalk, along with a couple who appear to be in their twenties or thirties. The woman, a striking blonde, spots Emily and Dale before anyone else does, and points them out to one of the police officers.

“What’s going on?” Emily asks Dale, realizing this has to be more than a simple meeting.

“I have no idea, but those two are tenants.”

“You mean that couple?”

“They’re not a couple, they live across the hall from each other.” He raises his voice to address a cop who’s striding in their direction. “Officer, is there a problem in the building?”

“You’re the owner, correct?”

“Yes, Dale Reiss, and this is my wife, Emily. We’re supposed to be meeting Detectives Manzillo and Brandewyne. Are they here?”

The cop ignores the question. “I need you both to come with me. We have a potentially armed and dangerous suspect in the area.”

Armed and dangerous? Emily thinks about Jerry.

Surely they can’t be talking about him. Whatever his faults are, she knows in her heart that Jerry isn’t dangerous. She’d bet her life on that.

“Open up,” Rocky calls, banging on the door to the apartment. “This is the NYPD. We need to talk to you.”

No response.

He turns to look at Brandewyne beside him, and then over at Vic, covering them from an alcove a few feet away. Vic nods slightly, as if to say, Keep talking.

“Jerry? Mrs. Thompson?” Rocky calls. “You need to open this door right now. We’ve got the building surrounded.”